With Bitcoin price now back to mid-June levels, the market is once again beginning to question whether we are in a bull market. Since the local peak last August, the price has already fallen by 16%, and from top to bottom by more than 20%. Still, according to on-chain data, we don’t have much to worry about.
There are very few Bitcoins sold on exchanges
CoinDesk writes this based on data from Blockware Solutions and Glassnode. At the time of writing this is in circulation According to Blockchain.com, about 19.45 million Bitcoin (BTC). But an increasing share of it belongs to investors, and they don’t seem willing to sell.
This can be determined using on-chain data, as more and more coins are leaving crypto exchanges. The coins therefore end up in other wallets that do not belong to exchanges. Earlier this month, it emerged that investors were actually withdrawing their Bitcoins from exchanges en masse. This is due to a great lack of trust in the exchanges since the problems with the now bankrupt FTX.
CoinDesk writes that the percentage of BTC in circulation, i.e. the number of coins on exchanges, hit a new low this week at 5.4% of the total. That’s even a record. This percentage also includes coins that are on exchanges but owned by traders. The number of coins you can buy yourself is therefore even smaller. According to Glassnode, the proportion of coins that have not been touched for at least a year is now 68.5%.
Bitcoin price can become volatile
“(Dealers dictate) the price in the short term. When there is less and less liquidity, low demand leads to large price increases,” Blockware explained. A good example of this is news like last summer’s announcement that several major Wall Street financial institutions would be launching a crypto exchange. Some prices then rose by tens of percent.
But it could also be inconvenient. When news provides investors with a reason to sell, the effect is just as large, but in the opposite direction.